It drives me crazy when sales people suggest that installing their lithium batteries automatically means we don’t need a generator.
Batteries are a storage device, generators are…wait for it…a generation device. They are different things.
Sure, installing a larger capacity battery bank (of any chemistry) might mean that we can anchor for longer, or sail for longer, without starting a charging source, but eventually, and in some way, those batteries will need charging…duh.
And if we have enough solar to never need a generator, then we might not even need lithium batteries.
Point being that confusing this basic difference between batteries and generators, sets us up to make bad system design decisions…and often spend our money unnecessarily.
More on the generator decision here (needs updating).
If you don’t need lithium batteries, though, how is Navico going to sell you $85,000 of power electronics? Think of the salesmen and their commissions, or the managers and their bonuses.
There is a very real tendency, and it’s become much worse in the last 7-10 years, to throw over-engineered complexity at problems that do not actually require or benefit from complex solutions.
Hi Matt,
I too have noticed the trend you call out getting way worse and the speed of that deterioration seems to be getting worse too.